Why only 2 geniekin in rage of elements?

[agoak]

I'm starting pathfinder with 2e remastered, and it feels like I am being forced to buy legacy products in order to get heritages (or are they ancestries, that wasn't clear either) for the other 4 geniekin that I feel should have been included in rage of the elements.

[NoxiousMiasma]

All the pre-Remaster rules are available for free at the Archives of Nethys (2e.aonprd.com). The Remaster rules aren't a huge change, so I'd be suprised if they actually needed any adjustments, and AoN incorporates the errata anyway.

The Greek Classical Elements geniekin didn't get included because Rage of Elements was literally the first Remaster book and things were both very weird and moving very fast at the time. Presumably they'll get updated so they can be included in the new license at some point, but I'm not sure when.

[Finoan]

Agreed. Ifrit, Oread, Sylph, Undine, and Suli already existed in Ancestry Guide when Rage of Elements was created. There isn't much need to reprint them there.

And with Ancestry Guide being a Lost Omens book (mostly lore rather than game rules) there isn't much need to Remaster the entire book. The APs and Lost Omens books are 'Legacy' more because of publication date rather than because of any incompatibility or updating that they need.

Probably the biggest updating that they need would be with the Elemental Lore feat. It should give the Additional Lore feat for the associated elemental plane instead of just giving Trained proficiency - to match things like Elven Lore does for their ancestry lore skill. But even Ardande and Talos are needing that update from the look of things in AoN.

[agoak]

Unfortunately if my players are looking through the book or printed pdf "it's available on a website under the old system" isn't much use as a guideline, and "buy the legacy book, it's in there" is exactly the problem I have.
I do appreciate the explanation about it being the first remastered book though I am admittedly confused how there were licensing issues in transferring one Paizio book's contents into another Paizio book. Was the brand sold between versions or something?

[Finoan]

No, the licensing strangeness is because you can't retroactively reprint book pages. So the page announcing the game license that Ancestry Guide has, still has the OGL printed on it. Paizo could absolutely reprint Ancestry Guide (under the same name or a different name) and change the licensing page to the ORC license (as long as they removed any OGL-licensed content from it - all of the Paizo original content would be fine).

But just changing the license wouldn't make it a 'Remaster' book. Just like being published with the OGL license doesn't make something a 'Legacy' book (Rage of Elements is published with the OGL license).

Reprinting Ancestry Guide with the ORC license, and having that be the only change, would not update the Elemental Lore feat to use Additional Lore, for example. There would still be some work needed to fully say that the book's game rule content is 'Remaster'.

But that additional work may not be worth the cost of republishing.

So, the short answer that I am trying to give is that the Lost Omens line of books - even the Legacy ones - are Remaster enough to be worth buying even today. You wouldn't want to buy the "Core Rulebook" or the "Gamemastery Guide". Buy "Player Core", "Player Core 2", and "GM Core" instead. But that is because those are rule books, not lore books.

[exequiel759]

There's always Archives of Nethys as well.

[Nightwhisper]

agoak wrote:

I do appreciate the explanation about it being the first remastered book though I am admittedly confused how there were licensing issues in transferring one Paizio book's contents into another Paizio book. Was the brand sold between versions or something?

The five other (air, earth, fire, water, and mixed) geniekin not being in Rage of Elements isn't a licensing issue itself. It's more that Rage of Elements wasn't originally developed as a remaster product, it was converted to a remaster product partway through development. So when it was being scoped and development began, it was going to be published as part of the exact same version of the system where the previous five geniekin existed. So reprinting those 20 pages would've been the option that draws bad reactions. And trying to add 20 pages to the book by the time they knew there was going to be a remaster would've been practically impossible.

[Ravingdork]

agoak wrote:

I'm starting pathfinder with 2e remastered, and it feels like I am being forced to buy legacy products in order to get heritages (or are they ancestries, that wasn't clear either) for the other 4 geniekin that I feel should have been included in rage of the elements.

Just because you feel it should be so doesn't mean it is or should be that way.

You're not being forced to buy anything at all. Thats just not the way Paizo operates. All of the game's rules, all of it, is provided online by Paizo, for free, including your versatile heritages.

And unless your players don't use modern phones and devices, looking them up shouldn't really be much of an issue for them either.

To make it even easier for you though, here is a complete list of all the versatile heritages, including the elemental heritages below:
- Ardande (plant/wood)
- Ifrit (fire)
- Oread (earth)
- Suli (elements)
- Sylph (air)
- Talos (metal)
- Undine (water)

As has been said, you may need to update their Elemental Lore feat to include Additional Lore, but that's it. Everything else matches what already exists in Remaster.

Just have fun! Don't let IRL labels (especially those that exist soley for legal reasons) get in the way of you and your friends enjoying a game of imagination.

[Ajaxius]

I imagine part of the issue is just Paizo not expecting the remaster to be as much of a smash hit as it was.

[BotBrain]

I think the Karen comment is a little unnecessary to someone expressing frustration over what is a confusing situation if you weren't there for it.

OP, others have touched on it but the remaster is as much a balance patch as it was Paizo moving their new publications off the OGL. The problem here is that rage of elements was in the pipeline as the OGL crisis hit, so it got a wording change but there wouldn't have been space to publish any remastered rules. You might also note that elementalist didn't get a reprint alongside the new feats, even though it's also got the same awkward legacy/remaster split that genekin does.

The legacy rules also aren't an "old system", especially outside of classes which were the major changes. The other genekin are all fully compatible out the box, especially as Archives of Nethys does an excellent job of incorporating any errata.

It's best to understand "legacy" as not meaning "This doesn't work anymore" but instead "This may contain references to rules text that has been updated". Fortunately, archives will also link you to the updated version of the referenced rule by default, so your work is minimal. This is why everyone here is so insistant on sending you there instead of the books, because not only is it free and officially sanctioned, but it's really well made.

[Kelseus]

Ajaxius wrote:

I imagine part of the issue is just Paizo not expecting the remaster to be as much of a smash hit as it was.

Paizo was not doing Remaster because they wanted more money. They did remaster because the alternative was spending every dime they had and then some fighting with a multi-billion dollar company over the copyright of the term "magic missiles" and "owlbear."

Ask any of the Paizo employees (or go back and look at their former posts). Paizo would have 100% been happy to stick with OGL. Hasbro forced their hand.

[Perpdepog]

Just as a reminder, particularly if anyone is planning on using geniekin as foes any time soon, ifrit were renamed to naari in the Remaster; ifrit are now what the genies who give rise to naari are called rather than their prior name of efreeti.

[moosher12]

The actual reason is that Rage of Elements is not actually a Remastered book. Wood and Metal geniekin are OGL, not ORC, therefore they are still Legacy ancestries. There are NO remastered geniekin at all. It's an OGL book written with early Remastered writing style in mind, but it is not actually a Remastered book. It only needed two geniekin because the other 5 already existed in OGL. But yeah, none of the Rage of Elements content is ORC, therefore none of the Rage of Elements content is actually Remastered content, until the book either gets reprinted under ORC, or until a newer book publishes content scraped from it. (For example, if I wrote an ORC book, I cannot write material for the Kineticist, because the Kineticist is not a remastered class. I'd instead need to write Kineticist material in an OGL book. Though, because Paizo is 1st party, they can legally write supplemental material for their own OGL books in their own ORC books without needing to port the OGL content to ORC, which is why Impossible Magic includes Kineticist options while Kineticist is still OGL).

But on the bright side, this means that eventually, geniekin will be remastered, and because wood and metal geniekin are legacy, that means there's a good chance all 7 subtypes can be included in the same book when it comes time. It just won't be rage of elements. A direct remaster of an existing book keeps pagination, so there is no way to add the remaining 5 geniekin to that book in the event of such a remaster. It'd either be in a new element-themed book, a new race book to the tune of Galactic Ancestries and Ancestry Guide, a combination of one of the earlier including the remaining 5 geniekin and a remaster of Rage of Elements, and lastly, I have an unlikely hope that because Impossible Magic shows an elemental on its cover, I think a magic themed book would be a good fit to include the geniekin if it includes new ancestry options at all. Either way, Paizo has been doing a good job rolling out Legacy ancestry options with each core and lost omens book, so I'm sure they'll come in time.

[HenshinFanatic]

I'm hoping they'll be in Impossible Magic, because I don't see many other possible places for them to show up organically unless Paizo starts going back to releasing products akin to their old PF1E line of softcovers like Melee Tactics Toolbox, Weapon Master's Handbook, People of the Stars, etc.

[Zoken44]

I was thinking this too, but I hadn't heard anything about it.

[BotBrain]

I'm not holding my breath for them being in impossible magic, it sounds like it's going to be a book really hurting for page count.

[Xenocrat]

They've only ever remastered/converted-to-ORC old products that are necessary to have an independent viable product line should Hasbro follow through on their old threats. Originally this was the bare minimimum of the core books.

Probably Guns and Gears and Dark Archive weren't originally on any longterm plan (and maybe not Monster Core 2), but Paizo's customers had the bad taste to buy enough that they sold out and could support an economically viable reprint with the absolute bare minimum of work to strip out OGL and almost no effort on rules fixes.

As low as I'd expect the future G&G and DA revenue to be, providing the geniekin in a new book is surely going to make even less compared to alternative new material they could be printing.

[moosher12]

Xenocrat wrote:

They've only ever remastered/converted-to-ORC old products that are necessary to have an independent viable product line should Hasbro follow through on their old threats. Originally this was the bare minimimum of the core books.

Probably Guns and Gears and Dark Archive weren't originally on any longterm plan (and maybe not Monster Core 2), but Paizo's customers had the bad taste to buy enough that they sold out and could support an economically viable reprint with the absolute bare minimum of work to strip out OGL and almost no effort on rules fixes.

As low as I'd expect the future G&G and DA revenue to be, providing the geniekin in a new book is surely going to make even less compared to alternative new material they could be printing.

I think there's two reasons we're more likely than not to eventually get geniekin within the next few years:

1. Geniekin are actually pretty popular. Especially since they have the D&D overlap with genasi, so a lot of D&D people come in wanting to be geniekin. We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back. So Paizo is certainly remastering Legacy stuff as soon as the appropriate book comes up. I don't think Paizo would plan to sleep on a fan favorite for too long. Something gives me the feeling they'd at least be more popular than fetchlings. But we're still relatively early in the Remaster, to be frank.

2. I don't think page count is gonna be an issue, if anything, the remastered format I think more likely than not is probably gonna compress the geniekin into a single geniekin heritage, as the various outer planes scions (tieflings, aasimars, aphorites, and ganzi) were compressed into Nephilim. Granted, some folks probably would not be fond of this change and the need to use Lineage feats, but with the host of universal geniekin feats, I have a strong feeling that switching to a single "geniekin versatile heritage" that divides the individual subtypes into lineages would be the likely move in a remaster, reducing the heritages to a relatively small page count. Enough to slot into any rulebook that would have ancestries anyway. Though I would not be surprised if they pulled a nephilim, only granted the lineages for the first 5, and then granting the final 2 lineages elsewhere. If we ever got a new Lost Omens Ancestry Core to the tune of Galactic Ancestries, that'd also be a very easy place to just finish off the remaining ancestries in one fell swoop, and have room for some new ones.

[Trixleby]

moosher12 wrote:

We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back.

What do you mean back? Did they go somewhere?

[PossibleCabbage]

Trixleby wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back.

What do you mean back? Did they go somewhere?

Most likely they're just being brought up to remaster standards with things like "feats that give access to flight."

[Squark]

Trixleby wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back.

What do you mean back? Did they go somewhere?

Well, for the minority of the playerbase that refuses to touch legacy content, they have, at least.

(For those wondering about their iminent "return," Strix and Fetchlings/Kayals will be in Lost Omens: Cheliax, and Sprites will be in Feybound)

[BotBrain]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Trixleby wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back.

What do you mean back? Did they go somewhere?

Most likely they're just being brought up to remaster standards with things like "feats that give access to flight."

And feats in the double digits. A lot of the early non-core ancestries got so little to work with.

[Trixleby]

BotBrain wrote:

And feats in the double digits. A lot of the early non-core ancestries got so little to work with.

This is welcome news. I agree, a lot of the newer ancestries introduced in content feel fairly bare bones. More expansion for extant races is always welcome imo.

[Pacifist Paladin]

I'm sure they'll get remastered at some point, but its hard to tell where (like I would have bet money kitsune would be remastered with Tian Xia but no dice). Like I'd love to confidently say that Golden Road or a theoretical Casmaron book would have them but who knows. It'd be more likely if they get the nephilim treated and are condensed into one heritage.

Honestly with all the pre-master ancestries I think there is more than enough to justify a "Ancestry Guide but Not" similar to the relationship between Gods and Magic vs Divine Mysteries. That said haven't heard anything to that effect and the active remaster period seeming to have closed so I'm not expecting it.

[TheTownsend]

Pacifist Paladin wrote:

It'd be more likely if they get the nephilim treated and are condensed into one heritage.

I think people overestimate the likeliness of this happening. Tiefling and Aasimar specifically needed to change for copyright reasons. They got merged because the concepts were very similar and, crucially, it was easy because the base heritages did the exact same thing. There was no baseline mechanical difference to carry over, both premaster versions (and Aphorite) just upped your nightvision one step. (Admittedly, Ganzi messed this up a little, but that was a reasonable loss)

The different things some of the Geniekin heritages do are important enough to their flavor that I don't think you could consolidate them. I wouldn't want to be an Undine and have to worry about what lineage feat I have to take to actually be amphibious, that should be part of the base heritage so you can play freely with feats. Frankly, I'd prefer if Oread, Suli, Sylph, and Ardande had more unique baseline benefits, but that's just me.

[BotBrain]

Yeah I agree with Townsend. Geniekin being separate with shared feats sells their fantasy much better. It works with nephalim thematically because it shows how they're two sides of the same coin. I don't think geniekin would benefit from that.

And then, as mentioned, I don't want to have to mess with lineage feats to get undine benefits, whereas I think with Nephilim it's a much easier pill to swallow because their mechanics and aesthetics are much more separated.

[Perpdepog]

I'm also more in favor of all of the heritages remaining separate. I think they could consolidate all of the geniekin into a singular heritaege and leave all the baseline benefits in the heritage, but it'd either require homogenizing the different geniekin even more than they already are, and I also feel that going in the opposite direction would be preferable, or it'd make the heritage text itself rather bloated and messy.

[Pacifist Paladin]

To be clear I don't want them to be condensed either, but from a publisher / page count perspective it makes enough sense that I can't rule it out as a direction they'll go.

[JiCi]

Pretty sure that standardized feats could be used for them.

[exequiel759]

Tbh I think they could merge all the geniekin into a heritage without problem. Most of them grant you either darkvision or a small resistance to a certain elemental damage type. The heritage could easily make you choose an element and gain resistance to it, plus darkvision.

Geniekin have a ton of feats that overlap between them, so those would be merged.

[ornathopter]

I'd like it if those generic geniekin feats could be condensed with standard ancestry feats, because if that space got freed up we could have some more interesting element-themed ancestry feats. Personally if I'm looking at making an elemental plane touched character, it's because I want to make someone who's all fire or all air, not do wish-granting stuff. I'd rather they lean more into making the plane touched ancestries work for all kinds of elemental characters, rather than consolidating them as genie variants.

[NoxiousMiasma]

ornathopter wrote:

I'd like it if those generic geniekin feats could be condensed with standard ancestry feats, because if that space got freed up we could have some more interesting element-themed ancestry feats. Personally if I'm looking at making an elemental plane touched character, it's because I want to make someone who's all fire or all air, not do wish-granting stuff. I'd rather they lean more into making the plane touched ancestries work for all kinds of elemental characters, rather than consolidating them as genie variants.

The elemental planetouched aren't all related to genies, though? They're getting called "geniekin" in this thread because that's a common shorthand (and unlike A Certain Other Fantasy TTRPG, they don't have a group name), but there's lineage options for each element that aren't genies at all.

Like, a sylph might be descended from any sapient air elemental, not just a jaathoom - a smokesoul might be the grandchild of a belker, while one with the Cloud Gazer feat might be descended from a Picture-in-Clouds. Elemental planetouched often also descend from Primal dragons linked to their element, as well as genies - ardande and forest dragons, ifrits and magma dragons, oreads and crystal dragons, talos and skymetal dragons, so on and so forth.

[Squark]

ornathopter wrote:

I'd like it if those generic geniekin feats could be condensed with standard ancestry feats, because if that space got freed up we could have some more interesting element-themed ancestry feats. Personally if I'm looking at making an elemental plane touched character, it's because I want to make someone who's all fire or all air, not do wish-granting stuff. I'd rather they lean more into making the plane touched ancestries work for all kinds of elemental characters, rather than consolidating them as genie variants.

I'm not sure you should get your hopes up. Secrets of the Swarm doesn't use Standardized Ancestry Feats (based on the store preview page). I think standardized ancestry feats not being in a core rulebook may make them impossible to implement across books.

[ornathopter]

NoxiousMiasma wrote:

ornathopter wrote:

I'd like it if those generic geniekin feats could be condensed with standard ancestry feats, because if that space got freed up we could have some more interesting element-themed ancestry feats. Personally if I'm looking at making an elemental plane touched character, it's because I want to make someone who's all fire or all air, not do wish-granting stuff. I'd rather they lean more into making the plane touched ancestries work for all kinds of elemental characters, rather than consolidating them as genie variants.

The elemental planetouched aren't all related to genies, though? They're getting called "geniekin" in this thread because that's a common shorthand (and unlike A Certain Other Fantasy TTRPG, they don't have a group name), but there's lineage options for each element that aren't genies at all.

Like, a sylph might be descended from any sapient air elemental, not just a jaathoom - a smokesoul might be the grandchild of a belker, while one with the Cloud Gazer feat might be descended from a Picture-in-Clouds. Elemental planetouched often also descend from Primal dragons linked to their element, as well as genies - ardande and forest dragons, ifrits and magma dragons, oreads and crystal dragons, talos and skymetal dragons, so on and so forth.

Exactly! That's why I don't want feats like Genie Weapon Flourish and Noble Resolve and Miraculous Repair, ones that are just about being descended from genies and that all the elemental planetouched heritages get, to be a reason to consolidate all the heritages together. I would rather those be minimized and their page space replaced with more unique-to-each element feat options, instead of having one big combined Genie Heritage. Because that way, it would be much better for people who want to have elemental ancestry characters totally unrelated to the genie aristocracy.

[moosher12]

NoxiousMiasma wrote:

ornathopter wrote:

I'd like it if those generic geniekin feats could be condensed with standard ancestry feats, because if that space got freed up we could have some more interesting element-themed ancestry feats. Personally if I'm looking at making an elemental plane touched character, it's because I want to make someone who's all fire or all air, not do wish-granting stuff. I'd rather they lean more into making the plane touched ancestries work for all kinds of elemental characters, rather than consolidating them as genie variants.

The elemental planetouched aren't all related to genies, though? They're getting called "geniekin" in this thread because that's a common shorthand (and unlike A Certain Other Fantasy TTRPG, they don't have a group name), but there's lineage options for each element that aren't genies at all.

Like, a sylph might be descended from any sapient air elemental, not just a jaathoom - a smokesoul might be the grandchild of a belker, while one with the Cloud Gazer feat might be descended from a Picture-in-Clouds. Elemental planetouched often also descend from Primal dragons linked to their element, as well as genies - ardande and forest dragons, ifrits and magma dragons, oreads and crystal dragons, talos and skymetal dragons, so on and so forth.

Geniekin are not called such in this thread as a shorthand, they are called Geniekin because that is what they are called in Ancestry Guide pg. 98-119 They are presented as one heritage group with multiple heritage feats.

Ancestry Guide pg. 98 wrote:

Geniekin

The elements themselves flow through the veins of geniekin, mortals who carry the proud legacy of their elemental ancestors.

As for folks talking about keeping geniekin as is or congregating, I think that problematically, the race itself is 18 pages. Plus 8 more pages in the event that wood and metal gets remastered alongside them (to remind, there is not a single geniekin heritage in remaster atm. Rage of Elements was printed under the Open Gaming Licence, not the Open RPG Creative Licence.). So, any book with geniekin being separated into constituent parts would need to reserve 26 pages to them. Which I don't think we're going to see unless we get a remastered Ancestry Guide to the tune of Gods and Magic/Divine Mysteries.

Only way I see us getting these ancestries in any other sort of book is if they are aggregated together like a nephilim.

Though personally, I'd prefer the remastered Ancestry Guide approach. I've said it before, but there are few-yet-plentiful enough legacy ancestries in the system to fill a new ancestry guide, but leaving room to add some new ancestries to sweeten the pot. And every ancestry that is scalped from the original ancestry guide is a potential new ancestry that can go into the remastered one.

The only other way I can see Paizo justifying this many pages to a book is if the book itself HEAVILY fits the theme. But problematically, the only sort of book that fits that level of detail would be replacing Rage of Elements with an entirely new elemental planes book, to the tune of replacing Secrets of Magic with Impossible Magic. While it is technically possible, as it is, Rage of Elements is more expected by folks in the community to get a Dark Archives/Guns & Gears style update, rather than a more drastic redo, so this approach feels all the more unlikely, due to its status of being an OGL book written like an ORC book.

TLDR: Unless we are getting either a remastered elemental planes book to replace Rage of Elements, or a remastered lost omens ancestry book to replace Ancestry Guide, our only hope to getting geniekin in remaster is gonna be compression.

[ornathopter]

Yeah, I have my hopes set on a new Ancestry Guide, especially because I'd love a round of ancestries that don't fit neatly into a particular setting book. I'm sure between unremastered material, leftover pf1 ancestries, and just giving the writers free reign, you could easily fill a book. And as far as I can tell, people would be happy to pre-order that sort of thing. And it'd be a good place to introduce standardized ancestry feats, too.

[The Raven Black]

moosher12 wrote:

As for folks talking about keeping geniekin as is or congregating, I think that problematically, the race itself is 18 pages. Plus 8 more pages in the event that wood and metal gets remastered alongside them (to remind, there is not a single geniekin heritage in remaster atm. Rage of Elements was printed under the Open Gaming Licence, not the Open RPG Creative Licence.).

A small note that Rage of Elements is indeed OGL and not ORC, but it is part of the Remaster.

This is why the Kineticist on AoN does not have the Legacy Content tag whereas Magus still has it (until Impossible Magic ofc).